Rowning, John

, an ingenious English mathematician
and philosopher, was fellow of Magdalen college, Cambridge, and afterwards rector of Anderby in Lincolnshire,
in the gift of that society. He was a constant attendant at
the meetings of the Spalding Society, and was a man of a
philosophical turn of mind, though of a cheerful and companionable disposition. He had a good genius for mechanical contrivances in particular. In 1738 he printed at
Cambridge, in 8vo, “A Compendious System of Natural
Philosophy,” in 2 vols. 8vo; a very ingenious work, which
has gone through several editions. He had also two
pieces inserted in the Philosophical Transactions, viz.
I. “A Description of a Barometer wherein the Scale of
Variation may be increased at pleasure;” vol. 38, p. 39.
And 2. “Directions for making a Machine for finding the
Roots of Kquations universally, with the manner of using it;”
vol. 60, p. 240. Mr. Rowning died at his lodgings in
Carey -street, near Lincoln’s-Inn Fields, the latter end of
November 1771, at the age of seventy-two. Though a
very ingenious and pleasant man, he had but an unpromising and forbidding appearance: he was tall, stooping in
the shoulders, and of a sallow down-looking countenance*.2

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